Courts and Tribunals Bill

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool Riverside) (Lab)]

There is lots in this Bill that I really support, but I am ideologically opposed to restricting the right to jury trial, because it undermines the foundations of our democracy, and I have not seen any evidence to show that it will go anywhere near tackling the backlog.

Madam Deputy Speaker,

“Our jury system may be centuries old, but it is still fit for purpose today. Successive studies have shown that, on average, jury verdicts are not affected by ethnicity… including in cases with all-white juries… ‘one stage in the criminal justice system where B[A]ME groups do not face persistent disproportionality is when a jury reaches a verdict.’”

Those are not my words—they are the words of the Justice Secretary, written in his seminal 2017 review. While the findings are nearly a decade old, the research by Cheryl Thomas on which those conclusions are based still holds true today.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that after enduring 14 years of Conservative government, now is the opportunity to implement the Lammy review in full?

[Kim Johnson]

I really appreciate my good friend’s intervention, and I do agree. The review was a great piece of work, and it contains some really great recommendations that will work, particularly on joint enterprise.

Only 10% of Crown court judges are from ethnic minority backgrounds, and just 1% are black—a figure that has remained the same for a decade. When trust in the police and the criminal justice system remains chronically low among black communities, and when we know that these systems produce disproportionate outcomes, particularly in relation to joint enterprise, why are we pouring yet more fuel on the fire? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, particularly when we all know that evidence exists but is being ignored.

All hon. Members recognise that the backlog needs to be tackled, and that victims need to be given the swift justice that they deserve, because justice delayed is justice denied. However, we need evidence-based solutions, focused on what is causing the backlog. The Institute for Government says that the proposals will save only between 1% and 2% of court time. To put that into perspective, that means that rape complainants and victims who are currently waiting for around a year for their case to be heard may see their cases brought forward by just a week.

Last month, I was pleased to visit Liverpool Crown court with the Criminal Bar Association. I had the pleasure of hearing from Judge Andrew Menary, under whose leadership Liverpool courts can now proudly boast the lowest backlog in the country. His work in bringing together prosecution and defence teams to negotiate common-sense solutions to avoid cases needlessly going to court, speeding up access to justice for victims and ensuring fair outcomes for defendants, make him a leading light in our country. I am pleased that the Government are looking to roll out these solutions.

I know that the Justice Secretary cares deeply about tackling racism in the justice system; it is on record that he has been trying to do exactly that for decades. I urge him to listen to the strength and breadth of feeling in the House today, and across the legal profession and our country, including to the voices of the 3,000 signatories of a letter to the Prime Minister. Once the right to trial by jury is removed, we may never get it back again. Justice needs juries, and today we must defend them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)]

While there is lots to welcome in the Bill, I fear it has been completely overshadowed by plans to restrict jury trials. This is not what victims are asking for—they need changes that are backed by evidence and that will result in genuine improvements to the criminal justice system. Jury trials are not what has led to the backlog, and these reforms will not reduce it.

I have a close friend who is a survivor of rape, and she is alarmed by this proposal. After a three and a half year wait for her trial, the delay made her suicidal. She desperately wants action on court backlogs, but she opposes these plans and is outraged that her trauma and that of thousands of survivors is being used to justify what she sees as effectively a cost-cutting exercise. As learned Friends know, courts could be instructed to prioritise rape cases and have them heard in a set period of time, such as six months. As my brave hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) asked, where are the specialist courts? None of these things require legislation. We need to address the backlog in our criminal courts, but any steps taken should never jeopardise equality or access to justice.

[Kim Johnson]

My hon. Friend is talking about not jeopardising equality. Does she agree that more needs to be done to recruit more people from diverse communities, to ensure that our systems are far more diverse and represent the communities they serve?

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She will have heard people talk many times in this Chamber about the lack of diversity in our judicial system.

Last July, I met the Bar Council, because when a sector has issues we should talk to the workers—more often than not, they have the solutions. In my view, that has always been the Labour way. They had a number of recommendations that should be considered—for example, that defendants who are awaiting trial should be remanded at a conveniently located prison close to the court, because Serco, the company tasked with prisoner transportation, persistently fails to transport prisoners in good time. This wastes the court’s time and results in a new court date having to be set. We should end that privatisation and bring prisoner transportation back in-house.

We should provide greater flexibility for hearings and allow virtual courts, so that more cases are heard; permit all available judges, including those who have retired but are below the age of 75, to sit as many days as they are available; invest in more court staff and support; and list trials from Monday to Thursday, so that all short matters can be dealt with on one day—namely, Friday—minimising disruption for all other court users, such as jurors, witnesses and defendants. These are all simple changes that would significantly maximise sittings while preserving the basic foundations of our criminal justice system. The wholesale change that we ought to be considering today is the complete reversal of the austerity measures introduced by the coalition Government, which led to this mess, but that has been overshadowed by the proposal to restrict jury trials.

Finally, racial bias in our criminal justice system is well documented. Any reforms should address this head-on, but to conduct a post-legislative review on discrimination is deeply insulting to those communities that are impacted. As I said earlier, this Bill was our opportunity to fully implement the Lammy review; instead, we will have a situation where there is no automatic right to appeal, when black women are 22% more likely to be convicted. To quote Ife Thompson, one of the brilliant lawyers who was protesting outside Parliament today,

“In a justice system that already produces racially discriminatory outcomes, removing juries means removing one of the few spaces where ordinary people and some real diversity still exist in the courtroom.”

We all have to have red lines, and racism in our justice system has ruined so many lives in our communities. I cannot support this measure, and if it is not removed from the legislation, I will not be supporting this Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Russell]

I am afraid I will not.

When we look at how much these measures will bring down the backlog in totality, it is simply not enough. When the time from reporting a rape to an actual trial is, on average, six years, bringing down the backlog slightly by the end of the next Parliament is just not enough. I have significant concerns about the restrictions on access to jury trials.

Anyone who has read Baroness Harman’s independent review of bullying, harassment and sexual harassment at the Bar should have real concerns about the attitudes of some barristers towards women and ethnic minorities. Not every barrister exhibits those traits, but they are a systematic problem. She talks about the fact that:

“A recurrent theme in the submissions was that there is a tolerance of misconduct at the Bar which is learned and passed down from generation to generation. I was told that some barristers, particularly men of the older generation, ‘have no idea how outdated and offensive some of their views are, nor do they care about the impact of sharing those views with others who may be offended by them’.”

[Kim Johnson]

The Justice Secretary identifies that we have these problems, and he talks about the delivery of training on racism and misogyny to support people to be brought into the 21st century. Does my hon. Friend believe that those kinds of training courses can work?

[Sarah Russell]

Obviously not everyone is exhibiting these traits and training can help, but my understanding, from what I have heard anecdotally, is that substantial numbers of members of the judiciary are not up to date with the training requirements that they already have. I would welcome hearing more from the Secretary of State about exactly how those training programmes will be developed, brought forward and made mandatory in a way that is effective.

It is of significant concern that Baroness Harman had to make a recommendation on the importance of the Judicial Appointments Commission taking into account findings of misconduct when considering who to appoint as judges. It is astonishing that she had to recommend that that should be required. How has the Judicial Appointments Commission been operating to date?

I stand here as someone who does not like to criticise the judiciary. I know that it has many hard-working members who have been operating in a difficult environment for a very long time. We have to be honest in saying that most of the rates that I have referred to were not put up by the new Labour Government either. We have had cuts to the justice system for 25 years, and that is why it is on its knees. We can do things within the context of the current system that might make it somewhat better, but I go back to my original question: when rape trials are taking six years from arrest to prosecution, what are we going to do to make wholesale change? Nothing I have heard so far has convinced me that what we will do here today, whichever permutations we go with, will fundamentally transform those waits.